Seeds of next global financial crisis being sown: officials

‘Emerging markets should prepare for more hikes with measures that could cushion impact’

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Oct 15, (AFP): Rising US interest rates, tanking emerging market currencies and a bitter US-China trade spat could push the world towards its next financial crisis but there is still time to avert disaster, global finance chiefs have said.

The world economy is still growing but faces an “unprecedented” combination of threats, the International Monetary Fund cautioned at an annual meeting with the World Bank in Bali this week.

Among them is growing protectionism championed by the Trump administration and the intensifying trade-and-currency battle between Washington and Beijing, which have imposed tit-for-tat tariffs on billions of dollars worth of goods.

Opening the Bali talks, Indonesian President Joko Widodo compared the dispute between the world’s two biggest economies to the hit television series “Game of Thrones”.

“Great houses, great families, battle each other fiercely to seize control over the Iron Throne,” he said.

But “confrontation and collision impose a tragic price not only on those who are defeated but also on the winners”.

And IMF chief Christine Lagarde warned of a “degree of uncertainty that we have not seen before” in international trade.

Disaster can still be averted, officials said at the Bali meet, with reassuring talk from the global financial elite that growth remains strong – the IMF projects 3.7 percent for this year and the next – and could yet withstand the risks gathering on the horizon.

And despite tensions, US and Chinese officials in Bali also sounded conciliatory tones. US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin described “productive” talks with the Chinese on the yuan, which Washington has accused Beijing of keeping artificially low to boost exports.

And China’s central bank governor Yi Gang called for “constructive solutions” to the damaging tiff, but insisted that Beijing was not devaluing its currency to gain trade advantages – a practice the IMF this week called on members to avoid.

But there are also other brewing concerns, including the US Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates.

This year has already seen three hikes, which experts largely agree are necessary to avoid overheating an economy with strong growth and low employment. That has squeezed emerging markets, which are seeing capital flee towards the US enticed by higher returns, and also threatens developing countries that have large debt burdens denominated in dollars.

“The global economy continues to grow but the outlook is now challenging especially for emerging markets due to the normalisation of the US monetary policy,” Brazilian central bank governor Ilan Goldfajn warned Sunday.

The US “needs to be very mindful that spillover from the effect of their policies is very real for many countries,” Indonesia’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati added, in an interview with Bloomberg TV.

Still, there is little expectation for now of a change of gear by the Fed, despite President Donald Trump’s vocal criticism of the rate hikes.

And top officials said emerging markets should prepare for more hikes with measures that could cushion the impact, including flexible exchange rates and careful management of capital movement. The consensus among central bankers and leading economic officials is that while the next global crisis may not be imminent, now is the time to prepare for it.